


Just Do One More Brave Thing

by gallopingmelancholia



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22708579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallopingmelancholia/pseuds/gallopingmelancholia
Summary: “Eddie? Are you OK?”“I have no fucking idea.”“I can’t see anything,” Richie says, “it’s dark as shit down here.”“I think it’s gone,” Eddie says.“Yeah, we killed that fucking clown,” Mike says. “He’s dead now.”“No, like, that humongous fucking hole I just had in my chest. It’s not there anymore, dude.”“Wait, what?” Richie says, and runs his hands frantically over Eddie’s chest and sides. He looks like he’s been crying.“Holy shit,” Bev says. Her voice is raw and raspy from screaming.“I think I’m alright?”-Eddie doesn't die. He's got some stuff to say.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 389





	Just Do One More Brave Thing

Eddie was dying, but now he’s not. The hole in his chest is gone, leaving only a tingling sensation where previously a claw had ripped through him, tearing out a few organs and leaving him bleeding out on the floor of a disgusting, germy storm drain. But not anymore; he’s fine now, or as fine as you can be when you were impaled and lifted about twenty feet in the air and discarded like a cigarette butt out a pickup truck window. He keeps gasping and groping at his chest, looking for the ragged bits of flesh he’d felt oozing out of his torso just moments before. But the chasm he’s looking for isn’t there. He’s whole.

What the fuck just happened?

_What the fuck just happened?_

Richie and the other Losers come running back to him, looking like absolute hell, every single one of them panting and frazzled. Something near him falls, and it either echoes across the chamber or something else is falling over there. It’s loud. The ground is shaking. Eddie is shaking too. Richie grabs his shoulders.

“Eddie? Are you OK?”

“I have no fucking idea.”

“I can’t see anything,” Richie says, “it’s dark as shit down here.”

“I think it’s gone,” Eddie says.

“Yeah, we killed that fucking clown,” Mike says. “He’s dead now.”

“No, like, that humongous fucking hole I just had in my chest. It’s not there anymore, dude.”

“Wait, what?” Richie says, and runs his hands frantically over Eddie’s chest and sides. He looks like he’s been crying.

“Holy shit,” Bev says. Her voice is raw and raspy from screaming.

“I think I’m alright?” Eddie says. Richie lets out a hiccupping sob of relief.

“Can you walk? Because it sounds like this place is going to explode—“

“—implode—“ Ben quietly corrects.

“ _Implode,_ shut the fuck up, Ben,” Bill continues, “and we should get out of here. Ben, Mike, help him up, let’s go.”

Ben and Mike move to grab a hold of Eddie’s arms. Richie stands with them, still checking Eddie over. Eddie wobbles a bit and nearly falls into Richie.

“Christ, Rich, get out of the way, I’m walking here,” Eddie says, putting on a shitty New York accent. Richie brays with laughter. It echoes along the walls of the drain as they walk out, Mike and Ben pulling Eddie along with them, following Bill and Bev out of the storm drain, up through Neibolt house, and into the yard. The house promptly collapses into a pile of rubble, mere feet from where they stand.

“Oh, it’s morning,” Richie observes inanely, once the splintered wood and roof tiles have settled to the ground. Bill squints up at the sky, then at his watch. Eddie is crouched over, his hands on his knees, panting.

“No, Eddie, hands behind your head, stay upright. You’re compressing your lungs and diaphragm. You need more airflow,” Ben says, drawing Eddie up and bending his arms correctly. Eddie laces his hands behind his head, and Ben guides him through the proper breathing techniques, like a personal trainer.

“That’s better. You’re OK, buddy. It’s just like in the house, when I was getting my stomach carved up. It wasn’t real. You’re safe. It was another one of his tricks. Hold it in, that’s right, exhale, eight seconds. You’re doing great. Inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. You got this.”

Eddie nods, his eyes full of tears, breathing in, holding it, breathing out. Bev joins him in the deep breathing. Richie keeps his hand propping up Eddie’s elbow, not knowing how else to help, but his own breathing is erratic and uncontrolled.

Mike is just looking at the pit where the evil house used to stand. “It’s over,” he says. “It’s finally over.”

“Can I stop being brave now?” Eddie asks Richie.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Give me a fucking hug, please,” Eddie says, holding out his arms. Richie immediately closes in on him and wraps him in his arms, followed in a split second by Bev, Ben, Mike, and Bill. They all sob. Tears and snot and blood and mud and sewage drip all over each other.

“We’re alive, we did it,” Bev says.

“We did it,” Mike repeats.

“It’s done,” Bill says. “It’s done.”

“I need to shower,” Eddie says, sniffling. “This is so gross.”

“I have an idea,” Bev says. “Follow me.”

They do. She leads them to the quarry. First they take off their shoes and toss their keys and phones and wallets into them, and then they jump right in, no one needing to goad the others into making the leap this time. They hit the water and float up to the surface, and it’s like being reborn. They let out whoops of joy and bursts of laughter. It’s just like when they were kids, just for that brief moment, the water shimmering in the sunlight.

“Implode,” Richie says, putting his hands on Ben’s shoulders and trying to force him under the surface. “This fucking guy.”

“It’s the correct term,” Ben says defensively, not even budging under Richie’s weight.

“They teach you that in architect school?” Richie asks.

“Yeah,” Ben says.

“There’s a time and place to correct people, Ben,” Bill says.

"Yeah, when they're wrong." 

“You’re a writer, you should know what words mean,” Bev says, splashing at him.

“Oh yeah?” Bill says, splashing back at her.

Mike takes the opportunity to swipe his arm through the water in a wide arc, managing to get all of them in the face with the splash. They sputter and race after him. In the shallower parts of the quarry, Bill and Mike run around, each trying to tackle the other. Eddie’s pretty quiet while they’re all swimming. He makes his way to the shallows early and sits with his arms around his knees, watching everyone else have a good time. He rubs his breastbone, then reaches behind himself to touch his back. No wound there. He can still feel the moment of impact and the pain as his intestines slipped around. The sting as air hit his exposed organs isn’t something he’s going to forget soon, nor is the sound his ribs made when they cracked. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe like Ben told him. Richie keeps looking over at him, plainly worried, but Bill is the first to approach.

“Are you OK?” he asks, leaning down towards Eddie, his freckles standing out against his pale skin in the sunlight.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Eddie says. “Just a little shaken.”

“That’s understandable,” Bill says.

“Plus this water’s gross, I don’t want to get an infection,” he says, gesturing to his cheek.

“Yeah, we should probably get some iodine or something on it,” Bill says.

Eddie snorts. “Iodine. How little you know about first-aid, Big Bill.”

“We’ll get going soon, I know we’re all starving. But I think we’d all like you to join us, if you feel up to it,” Bill says.

“Maybe in a bit,” Eddie says. “I’m gonna go back up there and get all our stuff so no one steals it.”

Bill looks a little perplexed, as if something like that can wait, but he just says, “Good thinking.”

Eddie stands up, brushes the dirt off of himself, and makes his way around the side of the quarry and up the hill to where they’ve deposited their phones and shoes. He gathers up everyone’s stuff, but sets it down in favor of putting on his own shoes and checking his phone. There are several missed calls and voicemails from Myra. He takes a deep breath and dials her back.

It’s a good twenty minutes before he gets back down to meet the others at the waterfront. They’re all lying around, drying off. Richie is the first to greet him.

“Eds! You missed it! We played chicken and Mike and I beat the shit out of Ben and Bev!”

Eddie doesn’t say anything, just gently sets everyone’s shoes down in a nice, clean row. Bev is running her fingers through her hair, trying to comb it out, and Ben remarks that she looks like the Little Mermaid. She wiggles her toes and laughs. Ben gives her a small kiss, and Eddie looks at Richie, who raises his eyebrows to confirm that yeah, that’s a thing those two do now. Jesus, he was only gone twenty minutes, what else did he miss?

They’re all so happy to be there, and Eddie wants to be that happy too, but he can’t stop replaying what he thought were his last moments in his mind. And when he’s not thinking about that, he’s thinking about the leper, and his mom, and his phone call with Myra.

But he realizes that he’s being a Debbie Downer, and if his friends are happy, he should try to be happy too. He’ll fake it until he can be alone and think it over, he decides.

He sits down next to Richie. “I’m fucking exhausted,” he says. He leans his head against Richie’s shoulder, and Richie wraps an arm around his waist.

“I’m hungrier than I am tired,” Richie says, “but I could also sleep for a week.”

Eddie’s finally warm. It had been so cold in that storm drain, then in that water. He feels better with his cheek against Richie’s sun-bathed skin.

“Let’s go back to the hotel and get some food delivered,” Bill says.

“How about shish kebabs?” Eddie says. “Just kidding, I've had enough skewers today.” He laughs weakly.

Richie says quietly, “That’s not funny.”

“It’s kinda funny,” Eddie says.

“You almost died, that’s not funny,” Richie says.

Well, that didn't work. “Hey, its OK,” Eddie says, ruffling Richie’s hair. Richie subtly leans into the touch. "I'm not leaking Hamburger Helper anymore, I'm OK."

"OK well, A) I can't believe you remember that joke, and B) Too soon, man. It happened like two feet from my face and it's been like, an hour, tops. Don't make me relive it yet."

"Yeah, Eddie, give us a chance to have a few nightmares about it first," Bev says. "Then we can laugh all we want at you getting fucking impaled."

"Not everything has to be funny," Richie whispers, squeezing Eddie closer. 

For some reason that makes Eddie feel like crying, so he doesn't say anything, and is absurdly grateful when Mike changes the subject. 

“The only thing they deliver in Derry is pizza, so that’s what we’re getting,” Mike says. “Come on, let’s head on back.”

They do. Ben and Bev are holding hands, so Richie jokingly takes Eddie’s hand and swings it a few times, like they're ready to start skipping sarcastically to make fun of them. But Eddie just holds on and keeps walking, so Richie holds on, and they walk. The hotel is still oddly deserted, for some reason. Mike gives the pizza place a call and he and the rest of the Losers go up to take a shower in their respective rooms. Bill says Mike can use his shower, and Ben offers to lend him some clothes so he doesn't have to go back to the library just yet. Richie clearly expects Eddie to go to his own room, but he follows Richie into his and pretends that it’s a normal thing to do.

“I got stabbed in that room, man, I don’t want to go back in there,” he explains. “And I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Fair,” Richie says. He closes the door behind him. “Do you want dibs on the shower or--?”

“Uh actually, can I talk to you about something?” Eddie asks.

“Sure, man, of course.”

Eddie can feel himself chickening out, so he takes a deep breath and doesn’t look at Richie’s face.

“So, uh, when I almost died earlier—“

“I remember that, yeah.”

“I um. There’s some stuff I didn’t get to tell you,” Eddie says.

“Like what?”

“I…I thought I was going to die, and it um, it wasn’t fun. And I just keep thinking of all of the stuff I never got to do, or tell you, and what I wish I’d said, and I—You were so upset, and all I wanted to do was make you laugh. I thought my last words ever were going to be an inside joke, and I was OK with that, because it was our joke. And I mean, when I was a kid, I did that too, but I didn’t really know why I wanted to make you laugh, or look at me, or pay attention to me, but I think I get it now, and uh.”

He sneaks a glance at Richie, who’s looking at him more intently than he’s ever seen Richie look at anything. God, Eddie’s afraid.

“I mean, I spent so long being so lonely and not knowing why, and when I saw you again, it all came back, and I just—“ He makes a move that he recognizes is a reach for his inhaler, so he jams his hand into his pocket and makes a fist. “I realized I never wanted to forget you ever again.”

“Me or all of us?” Richie asks, his voice abnormally quiet.

“All of the Losers, but you specifically,” Eddie says, licking his lips nervously. “Especially you.” Richie’s eyes follow the movement of Eddie’s tongue. He looks entranced.

“Oh,” Richie says faintly.

Richie’s not that much bigger than Eddie, but it feels like he’s taking up the entire room, that Eddie’s so small that he has to cross a great distance to touch Richie. He’s falling through the air and bracing himself to hit the water. But he does it; he bridges the gap between them and kisses Richie firmly. Richie responds immediately, catching Eddie up by the shoulders and holding him still so he can kiss him without losing him, as if Eddie is liable to disappear. A wave of something like terror and something like elation rises up in Eddie’s chest, centering itself where Pennywise’s claw had pierced through him, the emotion nearly as keen as the pain had been. Richie’s passion is surprising to Eddie—he hadn’t expected Richie to respond this way. Had he been waiting for this too? For how long? He’s clutching at Eddie with near desperation. Their tongues meet, and Eddie jolts as if he’s just been shoved. He clutches at Richie’s shoulders and lets him in, sighing contentedly into Richie’s mouth. Richie groans quietly and grabs the back of Eddie’s neck. His hands are warm and protective. Eddie has never, ever felt like this. He doesn’t even know what he’s feeling, just that it’s overwhelming and he has to let it wash over him until he can figure out what the fuck he’s doing, and above all he has to keep kissing Richie.

He ends up with his back against the wall, Richie pressed against his front, one of Eddie’s hands in Richie’s damp curly hair, the other on the small of Richie’s back. Richie is gently caressing Eddie’s hipbones, circling them with his thumbs, the alternating pressure setting a nice rhythm for their kiss. It seems so natural to Eddie. Of course this is what kissing Richie is like. He’s almost grateful they waited so long, that he knows what he’s doing now, so he wasn’t fumbling all over the place, embarrassing himself in front of the one person he’s ever truly wanted. He’s never even kissed a guy--he'd never allowed himself to--let alone a dirty, sweet kiss like this that’s been going on for who knows how long.

Richie pulls away enough to breathe, his forehead against Eddie’s. “Thirty years,” he says. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for almost thirty years.”

“I wanted you to do it thirty years ago,” Eddie says. “I wanted to but never had the nerve.”

“You’re braver than me,” Richie says. “I’d never have done it. I didn’t. I chickened out so many times.”

“You were going to?”

“Thought about it every day.” He kisses Eddie again, to prove to his younger self that he could. “I didn’t think you’d want me. I thought no one would want me. He told me so.”

“Shit, he did?”

“Yeah. You had the leper, I had homophobia.”

“That fucking clown.”

“Man, it felt good to kill him. We squeezed that bitch’s heart until it was applesauce.” Richie looks down at his hands, as if he expects to still see the blood under his fingernails.

Eddie doesn’t want to think about why he wasn’t ripping into Pennywise’s flesh along with the others. Instead he says, “I’m divorcing my wife.”

Richie stills. “What?”

“I don’t love her. Not anymore. I haven’t for a long time but I refused to admit it because I was scared.”

“I—“

“I think I love you.”

Richie is stunned. Maybe Eddie shouldn’t have dropped that bomb right away. But it was the truth, and he needed to say it.

“Holy shit,” Richie says. “Really?”

Eddie just nods, his mouth dry.

“God, I love you,” Richie says. “He took that from me, but I fell in love with you all over again. The second I saw you.”

Eddie kisses him again, then once more. He’s amazed. He wanted this, he said it, and now he has it. How could it be that simple? How had everything fallen into place, just like that? If it weren’t for the solid weight of Richie’s hand against his heart, right where he’d been impaled not five hours ago, he wouldn’t have believed it; he’d have thought it was another trick. But this isn’t nightmare real, this is imperfectly real. If Pennywise wanted to trick him by lulling him into a false sense of security, he wouldn’t have conjured up a fantasy scene where Eddie makes out with Richie while smelling of creek water and mud. That’s so far from his idea of romance that he can’t help but laugh into Richie’s mouth.

“What’s so funny?” Richie says.

“Nothing,” Eddie says. “I’m just happy.”

“I’m fucking over the moon right now,” Richie says. “I’m actually scared at how happy I am.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“Like, how do I know this is real and not some hallucination from the deadlights?”

“DUDE, me too! I was just like, ‘Fuck, I hope it’s really Richie and that this isn’t Pennywise fucking with me again.’”

“That fucking clown pretended to be me to get to you?” Richie sounds horrified but also weirdly excited.

“Yeah.”

“No way! He did that to me but pretended to be you!”

“Shit, really?”

“Yeah, man, he knew I was super gay for you!”

“Fuck!”

“I swear to god, he pretended to be you and I went to kiss you and he fucking laughed at me and tried to bite off my entire fucking head. It traumatized me into trying to be straight until, like, yesterday,” Richie says.

“That’s so fucked up.”

“Yeah, it really was.”

“I’m here,” Eddie says, placing his hands on either side of Richie’s face. “It’s really me here with you.”

“It’s really me here with you,” Richie replies. “I’ll be here as long as you’ll have me.”

Eddie kisses him once again. Richie’s stomach growls loudly, and they break apart, laughing.

“Pizza should be here soon. We need to shower,” Eddie says.

“Yeah,” Richie says.

The question hangs between them for a few seconds.

“OK don’t make fun of me, but I don’t want to take a shower together,” Richie says. “I want it to be a little more special than that, the first time.”

“Romantic,” Eddie says.

“Very much so,” Richie says. “I want to do the corniest shit for you. Flowers, chocolates, valentines, the whole nine yards. I’ll ask Ben to help me write a poem for you.”

Eddie snickers. “That’s really lame.”

“Oh my god, I’ve got something to show you later. You’re going to lose your mind.”

“If you’re talking about your dick I already know it’s not as big as you said it was.”

“It’s not that, and how do you know?”

“My mom told me,” Eddie says, and he and Richie burst into laughter.

In the end they decide that Eddie will shower first. Because Eddie truly wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t want to be alone, Richie sits in the bathroom and talks to him throughout, and Eddie does the same while Richie washes. They go downstairs to meet the others hand-in-hand and sit thigh-to-thigh. Surrounded by the people he loves most in the world, full of mediocre food, exhausted but alive, Eddie falls asleep on Richie’s shoulder. Richie leads him upstairs to bed, and he's out like a light as soon as Richie hugs him to his chest. When Eddie wakes up again, it’s 3am.

“Hey, sleepyhead, I’ve got a surprise for you,” Richie says. He’s already dressed.

He drags a protesting Eddie down to the parking lot and drives him to the Kissing Bridge. It takes a few minutes of crouching and mumbling, but soon his phone’s flashlight illuminates the letters R+E carved into the weathered old wood.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Eddie says, running his fingers over the barely legible letters.

“I wasn’t lying, man. 1989. That’s been there almost thirty years.”

Eddie is speechless. He never expected anything like this, not even when he walked across this bridge daily. It was so obviously something he was never going to have, he didn’t even mourn it as a lost opportunity. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“I told you, I had it bad. I did then and I do now.”

Eddie takes a few moments to absorb this. “What the fuck, man, I can’t compete with this shit. Every romantic gesture I’m ever going to try is going to pale in comparison to this, what the hell.”

Richie smiles and pumps a fist in the air. “Yeah, that’s right, motherfucker, I win forever!”

“It sucks we didn’t get those thirty years together,” Eddie says. “I wish we’d remembered each other.”

"We're together now," Richie says, shrugging. "I'm not in a position to complain."

A thought has been nagging at Eddie since the Chinese restaurant, popping up whenever he felt particularly happy. “What if it happens again? What if we don’t remember each other when we leave Derry?”

“I don’t see how that’s going to be possible, since I’m not leaving your side, like, ever,” Richie says. “I’ll move to New York, I’ll do whatever. You’re going to have to work to get rid of me.”

“I don’t think I’ll want to,” Eddie says.

“Good. Now let’s make out.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he owes it to his younger self, who dreamed of doing just that in this exact spot. His younger self was right: it’s fucking awesome. Well worth the wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone and their mother has written this scene but it's a classic for a reason. I hope you liked it.


End file.
